I found myself on this site researching douglas fir and how to stain it. I found the awesome video by gizmodyne and was totally stoked! But I still have a couple of questions: 1) I am staining brand new garage doors – what are the chances of the grades being different betweem baseboards and garage doors AND, if they are different, how should this difference affect the process prescribed by gizmodyne ? and 2) should I sand it, successively, 180 – 240 – glass paper before the washcoat? Any advice on these matters would be greatly appreciated as is your time. You guys rock!

I honestly don’t know what to tell you here. At the present I’m working on a big contraption made of reclaimed Fir. Gizmodine has a blog on finishing his kitchen cabinets which are Fir. I’m using one coat of BLO thinned with a little mineral spirits let dry 48 hours. Then coat with thinned shellac. Then antique with jell stain and finish with shellac. Read Giz’s blog. No too pieces of wood will act exactly alike. If you’re doing garage doors I would think sanding to 240 would be a waste.

Thanks for your help. After trying many samples with various products (sikkens, marine sparvarnish) we ended up going with Pennifins. I conditioned the wood with 90%mineral spirits and 10% linseed oil like Gizmodine suggested and the stain was taken up pretty evenly. We sanded with 120/150, depending on what we were trying to get at, but finished up with the 150. They look beautiful. Thanks again for all your help.

Still working on them in a basement with no juice, plastic on the windows, dust coming down from the guys working upstairs, and oh yeah, right on the water in New England. In the end, I had to convince my friend that under those conditions, any type of varnish or eurythane would end up looking terrible from the dust and the temperature affecting the curing time. The Sikkens product was interesting but you had to make sweet love to it in order to get it to look even and it was tacky for two days in the cold. The Pennifins is fantastic to work with under these conditions, easy to maintain, and the look is more rustic than McMansion. Thanks for the support ya’all! Will post when able.stf

This sounds like a good application for the old wood workers finish of 1/3 BLo, 1/3 turpentine, and 1/3 spar varnish. Then final with just the spar varnish. Might have to wait for the warm days of summer though.